Longing and Belonging
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Folsom Prison Blues tag story: Henriksen's closing in again, and they can't bail out of this one.


**Longing and Belonging**  
K Hanna Korossy

Dean Winchester looked up from the spread of papers around him, spoon halfway to his mouth, as the door to their motel room slammed open. Sam strode inside, long legs anxiously eating up the distance to the beds.

"We have to go."

"What?" Dean swallowed the mouthful of soup, muscles already coiled to follow his brother's lead, except… His gaze trailed down to the notes he'd been going over, then back up to Sam, who had already yanked his duffel off the floor and was proceeding to stuff clothes into it.

"We need to leave," Sam reiterated, casting Dean a _hurry up! _look that had him rising to his feet. The mug of instant soup on the table—food of choice for those short on time or money, and they were both—was forgotten as soon as Dean heard his next words. "Henriksen's here."

"_What?_" Dean repeated, feeling slow, but, geez, it wasn't like Sam was giving him a lot of details here. Dean moved in, close enough that he was in Sam's way as his brother turned to retrieve clothing, finally forcing annoyed, and worried, eyes to meet his own. "What happened?"

Sam blew out an anxious breath, hands fluttering restlessly at his side. "He tracked us here somehow—I saw him talking to a cop in front of the police department. Dean, we've been here a week, asking around. About a bunch of missing _kids_. We couldn't have been more suspicious."

Not just a bunch of missing kids, though. Dean glanced back at the table full of paper. Every single child in town under the age of eleven. Which even in a small town amounted to a heckuva lot of kids. Suspicious wasn't the word for it: the town had been ready to lynch anybody who even looked like they knew something, a feeling Dean was very familiar with. The only way they'd been able to get anywhere with their investigation had been under the guise of federal agents who were trying to help. One out of two lies was better than their average, anyway.

Until someone had apparently called the real deal. The one who had it particularly in for them.

Dean swallowed, feeling a slickness on his palms at old memories of searching frantically, feeling utterly helpless. "Wait, just…wait, Sam. We can't."

Sam's movements stuttered to a halt, and he looked at Dean with genuine confusion. "What? What're you—?"

"We can't just leave. Dude, we've got two dozen kids missing here."

"Did you find anything?" Sam's gaze darted over to the paper on the table and back again.

Dean shook his head in frustration. "Just a few more possibles. Nothing definite."

Sam blinked. Saddened unbearably for a moment as his voice tried to stay strident and failed. "Dean…they've been missing for almost two weeks now. They're probably—"

"No," Dean said flatly. He'd been the one trying to be realistic earlier about what they'd find, if they even found the kids and not just what had taken them. But sometimes kids were taken and simply kept. And the thought of anything else was unacceptable. Not _kids. _Not anyone's little brother or sister. "No way, man. We can't just walk away from this."

Sam leaned down a little, minimizing his height and maximizing his intensity as he stared into Dean's eyes. "Dean, Henriksen's here. The town's not that big—it'll take him a half-hour to find us. We're not gonna help those kids if we're in federal prison, either."

It made sense; Dean knew it did. It wasn't like he was jonesing for jail. And whatever demons his claustrophobia had played with in the Green River County Detention Center, he knew Sam had struggled with far worse. He softened, understanding but not able to give on this anyway. "Fine, we get out of here, we go climb into a hole somewhere, but we don't go far. Sam, man, we can't. They lost all their _kids_."

"And we still don't know what happened to them, Dean!" He sounded mad, but Dean knew better.

He chewed his lip. Sam was right. And his fear counted for a lot. Sometimes for everything, Dean doing all he could to make Sam feel safe. But now… "We can find them. You know we can. We're close," he said quietly, then left it up to his brother.

Sam's face might as well have been a book, every emotion that crossed it easy to read for someone who knew the language as well as Dean did: rebellion, frustration, fear, despair, resignation.

Dean squeezed his upper arm—he couldn't even remember grasping it—and nodded, then grinned a little. "Hey, I was always great at hide-and-seek, remember?"

Sam was obviously trying hard to trust him. "I remember you always found me in, like, less than a minute." Muscles unlocking one-by-one, long fingers unclenching.

"That's 'cause I know you, dude," Dean said not-unkindly. He let him go, reaching back to toss the soup, then grabbing his own duffel. "Henriksen just thinks he does."

Sam didn't answer, stuffing clothing into his duffel with experienced haste. His jaw had unclenched, though, and Dean would take what he could get.

00000

Henriksen, unsurprisingly, hadn't been alone. By the time Dean ventured into town for lunch, the FBI presence that had descended on the small Tennessee burg was obvious. Dean shook his head from his vantage point in a dark corner under the municipal center's eaves. They didn't show up for a couple dozen missing kids, but a potential Winchester sighting? Feds always had their priorities screwed up. Dean faded back into the shadows. He'd already ransacked an out-of-the-way vending machine, and had a date next with the dumpster behind the grocery store.

Raid a moderate success, Dean trailed up behind the row of main street buildings, heading back out of town the long, back way.

And nearly running into a gaggle of suits milling around in the alley a few buildings down.

Dean lurched back around the corner—of the newspaper office?—and grimaced as he pressed himself against the brick wall. Over the sudden hammer of his heart, he listened for any sign he'd been spotted.

The murmur of voices continued unabated.

Dean thunked the back of his head against the wall in frustration. Terrific. There went his most direct route back to the stand of trees to the north where Sam and the car were waiting. Sometimes this job just sucked: help people, dumpster-dive for meals, sleep folded up in a car, and get chased like dogs for your efforts. Actually, even dogs had it better than this. At least they got the occasional word of praise. If he and Sam had any sense at all, they'd put this town in their rear view and take off. Let Henriksen and his clones find the children.

Yeah, like that was gonna happen. Dean wasn't giving up on missing kids, period, let alone trusting Henriksen with them.

Dean glanced up and around, taking stock. He could go back the way he'd come, although it was in the wrong direction. Or, there was a fire escape hanging just a few feet above him…

Sam was frowning when Dean finally slipped up around and into the car. "Where've you been?"

"Had to take the stairs," Dean answered tersely, disgorging the pile of collected food onto the seat between them.

Sam sighed, whether at the answer or the selection of food, and silently dug into store-baked sweet rolls that were a few days past their due date, a little stale but still edible. He nodded at the laptop that was balanced precariously on his knees. "I think I know what took them."

Dean's eyebrows rose over a handful of potato chips. "You're kidding." They'd only been looking for nearly a _week_, sorting through every bit of lore they could find for things that preyed on children, from la lloronas to kelpies to ghouls. Even wood nymphs.

"I was talking to Mrs. Panacek over at the store again—you know, before Henriksen and half the FBI showed up—and she mentioned that the Markey girls who disappeared first weren't just sisters. They were _twins_."

Dean racked his memory for some significance to that and found nothing. He shook his head. "Yeah, so?"

"So," Sam said, looking up at him with that familiar intensity that turned his eyes vivid green. Danger forgotten, he was on the hunt. "We're in former Cherokee territory, remember?"

"Not really," Dean said honestly.

Sam, of course, ignored him. "Cherokee legend talks about _Yunwi Djunsti_—Little People."

"What, like midgets?"

"More like two-foot-tall demons who're invisible and who steal kids. It's said twins can see them and talk to them."

"Huh." It wasn't much to go on, but sometimes that was all they had. Dean cocked his head. "So…the kids are still alive."

"Probably," Sam conceded very quietly.

There were moments when they were in perfect synchronicity, when Dean felt like he could see right down to the bottom of his brother's soul. This was one of them. Sam wasn't as outwardly aggressive, but Dean forgot sometimes he knew exactly what it was to be a brother, too, that he _got _it. He had his own memories of loss and fear for his sibling. The knowledge probably made Dean's expression a little more syrupy than it had to be, but oh well. He enjoyed the feeling too much to care. "So, it say how to kill them?"

"No," his little brother answered, giving him a small smile. "But it does say where to find them."

Dean returned it. "Let's go."

00000

Of course, knowing where their prey lived and actually finding them? Two very different things. Especially when by knowing where to find them, Sam had meant he knew the Djunsti lived in scrub brush. Which didn't exactly narrow it down. Not to mention the invisible part.

Dinner was junk food and a loaf of bread with peanut butter. The latter at least offered protein, and neither of them was complaining. Twice already that day a black SUV had crept by on the road not a hundred feet away, and neither was anxious for a repeat trip into town and enemy territory. If they didn't find something soon, they'd start on emergency rations and move farther out before the inevitable search parties stumbled on to them. There was confidence, and then there was stupidity.

Come nightfall, they eased the Impala out from its cover and drove, lights off, heading north, away from the rocks and water. They only had a few square miles to search. Right, piece of cake.

"We're not looking for the Djunsti," Sam said in low tones as they geared up from the trunk. "We just need to find the kids. The Djunsti won't take them again."

Which was either awfully sporting of them or trusting of his brother, but Dean didn't say as much, just grunted. He and his dad had killed the nymph that had taken a six-year-old Sammy, or it would have been back for him. "Assuming there isn't a tribe of these things guarding the kids in the first place."

"True."

Dean hefted the canister of salt he held—good for sprinkling over invisible beings, a million-and-one uses—and kept going.

They searched methodically, checking likeliest spots first, then moving on to the less likely. Sam consulted an area map by flashlight, while Dean chewed on his nail and eyeballed the surrounding terrain, listening to his gut. Kids were small, but two dozen of them would take up a decent amount of room. Not to mention they wouldn't exactly be quiet. Sam had said the Djunsti spirited them away but then raised them as their own, which probably meant the kids weren't enspelled.

At least, so Dean was hoping. They had enough stacked against them in this deck.

Sam had that look of fierce concentration that reminded Dean at odd moments that the guy was every bit the hunter Dean was, needing protection only in his big brother's eyes, not the world's. Still, he could see the fresh tension that layered Sam's movements, the greater than usual wariness. Henriksen had shaken him up. Heck, Green River hadn't exactly done them any favors, either, and if Dean knew now what he hadn't then, he might have thought of a different plan for exorcising the detention center. There were some parts of their stay Sam still didn't talk about, that Dean only knew about from his silences and nightmares and the occasional flicker in the hazel eyes. Just like when Sam had been six, come to think of it.

They weren't going back to prison. He wasn't letting Sam go through that again, nor Henriksen anywhere near him. _Dean _wasn't going through that again. They'd find the kids, get them back to town, and get out.

The first part of the plan went unusually smoothly, anyway.

The sound barely registered, just a tickle on the breeze, but Dean froze, listening. Just ahead of him, Sam did the same, watching him, tilting his head to catch what Dean had.

Maybe it was experience, years of playing mom when Sam had needed one and Dean was all he had, but he was tuned to that sound, the soft sighing hiccup of an exhausted and upset baby. Dean swiveled his head, tracking it, willing it to continue until he pinned it. Zeroing in on the layer of brush that clung to a nearby swell of ground.

One glance at Sam and his brother fell in beside him.

The scrub proved to be thicker up close, and it took a while to hack an opening. They didn't dare call out, not sure what lingered nearby, watching. But Dean kept up a mental litany to the baby whose sobs had turned shuddery now, like Sammy when he'd been overtired. _It's okay, I'll be there soon, I'll take care of you. Everything's gonna be okay._ It was a mantra he'd never forgotten or changed.

Even after working at it a while, the space was only comfortably big enough for a child, or a two-feet-tall demon. For them, it was a painful squeeze, branches scratching and stinging. Dean felt a trickle of blood on his cheek, drips down his hand, and kept pushing on resolutely, reaching back to keep at least some of the thorns away from Sam.

Then they were through, and there were the kids.

Sitting on the ground or wandering around lethargically, the kids were as shocked to see them as the two of them were to find the motley group. There was no sign of their captors, just the kidnapees, dirty, scraped, but relatively whole. The two parties stared at each other a minute in silence, and then there was a tidal wave of small bodies crowding around them, leaving Dean barking a soft, relieved laugh and Sam staring at him with wide eyes.

Right. No experience with kids. Dean solved that one by picking up a particularly adorable girl who looked about two and shoving her into his brother's arms. Sam, protector that he was, automatically embraced her, the little girl practically disappearing in his long arms. Dean knelt down to the kids' level.

"It's okay, everything's okay now. I'm Dean, this is Sam—we're here to take you back to your parents. Anybody hurt?"

Teary shakes of the head. Hands on his back, his arms, trying to wend around his neck. Dean grinned at one flop-haired little boy who reminded him of Sam at that age, and gently took the baby that was wedged into an older girl's arms. The baby, sniffling breathlessly, had to be the one he'd heard, and Dean tucked it with great care into the bow of his arm. He glanced up at Sam, realizing somehow his brother had gained another toddler in his arms in the process, then nodded at the way they'd come in. Sam nodded back, and started toward the entrance.

"Okay, guys, we're getting out of here. Just follow Sam, okay? And we have to be really quiet."

"Or they'll come back?" a girl of maybe five lisped beside him.

Dean wrapped his free hand around hers. "They're not coming back for you again, sweetheart, okay? I promise, you're safe now."

Two weeks of whatever the kids had gone through made them pliable and silent. Dean heard a few quiet sobs, but otherwise the small crowd followed Sam like he was the Pied Piper, pressing together away from the branches, letting Dean guide them from behind. The baby fell asleep almost immediately against his chest, and Dean folded his jacket over its—his?—head to protect it from the foliage. He was still on alert, holding the little girl's hand in a loose grip near his pocket where his gun and knife were stashed, holy water and different metal bullets secreted nearby.

But nothing was chasing them. Nothing had been guarding the children in their brush prison, nothing tried to stop them from leaving. It was too easy. Dean saw the same knowledge in Sam's eyes whenever his brother glanced back at him to check his progress.

Once outside the brush, they realized the next dilemma. Twenty-some kids weren't fitting into the car. The feds were in town waiting for them. And calling parents out there would turn into a nightmare if the sure-to-be-around Djunsti turned up.

"Dean," Sam hissed at him.

"I know, I know, I'm thinking." Dean looked around, getting his bearings. The car was a half-mile that way. Town was the opposite way, about three miles. By road, anyway, and Dean frowned, calculating. Going by road meant winding around several hills and a pond. As the crow flew, however, it wasn't that far, maybe a mile at best. Not exactly a hike he wanted to take a bunch of tired kids on, but he wasn't coming up with a lot of alternatives.

Dean turned back to Sam, noting absently that the little girl he'd handed his brother was also already asleep, draped over Sam's shoulder. Old pain for lost futures flared briefly, then it was back to business. "This way," he said tersely. "A mile."

Sam's eyes flickered doubt, then resolve. He knew they didn't have any choice, either.

Dean knelt down again, solemnly addressing all the small pairs of eyes that were glued to him. "You're safe now, but we have to walk a little while to get back to your parents. It's not far, and Sam and I are gonna help. We'll go nice and easy. You older kids look after the younger ones, okay? We'll be home soon."

Sniffling nods. Dean gave them a bolstering smile, then rose to his feet and started walking, slowing his pace to match short legs.

They took turns carrying the smallest ones. Dean kept the baby, but the little girl was soon changed out for a small boy who'd burrowed his face against Dean's hip, then a toddler who seemed determined to go his own way. The sibling pairs in the group weren't hard to identify, smaller children carried, piggy-backed, or tugged along by watchful older ones, and twin girls—probably the Markeys—clasped hands tightly. A boy sidled up to Dean and asked him who he was.

"Police," Dean answered just as seriously. "Your parents sent us."

It was the answer every kid who wasn't them had been raised to trust. The boy nodded and merged again with the others, and Dean could feel his brother's gaze on the back of his neck. He shifted the sleeping baby higher and kept walking without acknowledging the look.

It was slow and, in the dark, kids tripped, cried, clung, and struggled on. But they stayed quiet and obedient, and Dean was surprised until he realized he could remember this, too. Sammy had been plastered around the high branch of an oak, teary and grubby and exhausted with fear. Dean had climbed up after him, and found it a lot harder to get down with Sammy clutching onto him like a human burr. He'd barely let go for the next twenty-four hours, silent and unresisting as they cleaned him up and coaxed him to eat, only coming to life when Dean tried to peel him away. Two days later, Sammy was cautiously chattering and curious and venturing to leave Dean's side again, although it took more than a week until he felt comfortable letting his brother out of his sight.

Dean hoped these kids would bounce back just as fast, and that they had parents and elder siblings who loved them enough to ride it out with them, because a quiet and pliant bunch of kids—just like a quiet and pliant twenty-three-year-old Sam—was frighteningly unnatural.

Sam was murmuring behind him, something low and soothing to the kids, and Dean listened to the tone instead of the words and kept leading the way.

They reached the edge of town at dawn, which seemed appropriate.

He and Sam had consulted during the last bit of distance, deciding to leave the kids under the canopy of the nearest building—the post office—as unobtrusively as possible and let them be found. By the time Henriksen had any reason to look for them, they'd be long gone, back to the car and out of there.

Dean had forgotten how early towns woke, even towns this tired and beaten.

They had half the kids settled on the cement walkway when the first shout went up. Dean glanced over at his brother, saw the strain in Sam's face, too, as they tried to calm kids who were panicking at being left, pry small hands off their clothes, get babies and toddlers settled with bigger kids. The stragglers had stopped in the street, looking around in sleepy bewilderment.

More shouting. A woman screamed.

"Dean," came Sam's terse voice. Dean nodded sharply, but the baby had started to wail as he tried to shift it to one of the twins, and three kids under five had latched onto his jeans. Dean lowered his head, trying to avoid attention. It was a little hard when everyone around him was half his height or less.

"My God, Jennifer!" A man had arrived to scoop up one little girl. As if on cue, the rest realized they were home and started to cry for their parents. Yet-unclaimed kids shrank back from the tumult, overwhelmed, and pressed themselves against the one sanctuary they knew: the Winchesters. Dean found himself staggering anew under the press of kids, saw Sam's large hands moving from one tiny body to another, trying to comfort.

And then the questions began, the adult voices almost as ragged and shell-shocked as the kids'.

"How did you—?"

"Who _are _you?"

"Get away from him!"

Dean found Sam suddenly pushing between him and a mother who looked like she was ready to hit him, only to be shoved by an enraged father. Dean caught his brother's arm and stood him upright, then turned angry eyes on the man. Enough was enough.

It was a boy, no more than seven or eight who brought the rising tension to a screeching halt as he lunged at Dean to wrap both arms around his waist and hold on.

"Daniel?" someone asked.

The boy shook his head and pressed his face more tightly against Dean, who automatically rubbed the kid's tow head. A now-familiar tug on his jeans had him glancing down to see the little blonde girl from before winding back around his leg, while a toddler settled on his boot.

Sam blinked at him. So did the parents.

There was a moment of frozen silence, then a new voice, a frantic call of "Daniel!"

The boy instantly let Dean go and threw himself into his just-arriving Mom's arms. She held him tightly, burying her face in his hair for a moment before tugging him back and looking him over with a smile. And then turning that teary joy on Dean. "Thank you. Oh, God, thank you so much."

Murmuring started up again, but the tone had changed. Suspicion had somehow shifted into thoughtfulness, then gratitude as logic overcame emotion, and the brothers' bedraggled appearance, the kids clinging to them, the ones still nestled in their arms finally registered. One woman hugged Sam after claiming the sleepy toddler he held, and the dad who'd been ready to tear them apart a minute before shamefacedly offered Dean a hand. He could feel himself gaping, and saw the same stunned look on Sam's face.

Sometimes…sometimes, however, they had the best job in the world.

That was, of course, when the Djunsti finally showed up.

The first warning Dean had was when his brother was yanked back. Thankfully empty arms pinwheeled to find their balance, then Sam was sprawling in the dirt shoulder between the building and the road. The next moment, he grimaced as something jumped on his chest, folding him with a _whoosh_. The air was filled with unearthly shrieks of displeasure at the loss of their prizes.

Dean growled, plowing out of the mass of kids as if he were surging out of a lake, little fingers flying off him like water drops, and launched himself at Sam's invisible attacker, knife out. He wasn't losing Sam, not twenty years ago, not now.

More screaming. Maybe the parents had changed their minds and decided he was attacking the kids, and for a moment, Dean didn't care.

His knife found something solid to lodge itself in, and came out stained with red. Sam shoved off the weight with a grunt, then pushed at something pinning his arm. Dean's knife met with resistance again, and he grinned ferally. This was the part he liked, when something paid for the damage it had wrought.

Something jumped on his back, and Dean immediately flipped it over his shoulder, slashing sideways with his knife and quite possibly beheading the thing, judging from the resistance he met. Sam was grimly dispatching another attacker of his own with his curved axe, then lifting the blade wearily as he peered around, waiting for the next wave.

His eyes suddenly widened. "Dean!" he gasped the same moment Dean felt the collar of his jacket tug upward, and then he was lifted and tossed with a lot more strength than he thought a two-foot midget should've been able to muster. He hit the concrete side of the post office hard, shoulder a sunburst of pain, ribs and hip flaring. After that, Dean stopped thinking about much of anything.

He heard Sam's battle cry, smiling with drunken pride at the formidable sound. More screams, calls, a kid wailing. Dean blinked, trying to snap things back into focus, succeeding only when a hard voice rang out above the din.

"Winchester, hold it right there!"

And Dean knew they were well and truly screwed.

He tried to stand but slid back down again, the concrete catching roughly at his jacket. No use, and Dean panted quietly as he tried to at least lift his head and look his enemy in the eye. He hoped ridiculously that Sam had slipped away and at least saved himself.

But it didn't surprise him when a broad, warm palm pressed against his chest, nor when the contact cleared his head a little. Dean looked from Sam's taut face and anxious eyes, beyond him to Henriksen's distant figure. "Midgets?" Dean breathed.

Sam shook his head: gone. One threat dispatched, another took its place. Story of their lives.

Sam's hand moved down to the gun still wedged into Dean's jeans, his movements blocked from Henriksen's sight by Sam's body, and Dean didn't even try to stop him. Sam wouldn't kill the man, but he was just as determined as Dean not to go down this way.

"No."

A woman's voice. Just a touch familiar and, as Dean squinted, he thought maybe they'd interviewed her at one point. Small and blonde, she clutched an equally blond little boy to her, the kid's face resting tiredly on her shoulder. Right, a mom. Single mom; Dean remembered thinking he would've flirted with her, maybe got a little MILF action in if not for the fact that her kid was missing. She'd been tiny and broken in her fear.

She was still small, but didn't look so defeated now as she moved over a few steps, nearly blocking Henriksen from Dean's line of sight.

"No," a man echoed her a moment later. It was the dad who'd shaken Dean's hand. His hand was wrapped now around the twin who still had the baby in her arms. He shuffled both girls behind him, then stood next to the woman.

Even from a distance, even through his pain, Dean could see Henriksen's expression shift. "Move aside, people—those two are wanted felons. Protecting them means you're obstructing justice. As in, breaking the law, under arrest, kids get taken away—ring any bells?"

"No." Another man, shaking his head. "You're not taking them." No kid clung to him, although he tousled some heads as he passed. He stood next to the other guy, a human wall now between the Winchesters and the FBI man. The woman who'd hugged Sam joined him.

News had spread. Parents were arriving, in tears, clasping kids to them. The children ranged from relieved to in shock to inconsolable, and Dean saw at least one large pair of brown eyes swivel to him over a parent's shoulder, trying to piece together rescue and return. He winked at the kid.

And then, as they realized what was happening, whispers spreading and small heads nodding in answer, the parents joined the line in front of Sam and Dean. The human barricade thickened until it was hard to see past them.

Dean's mind reeled, trying to grasp what was happening. No one ever spoke up for them, risked anything for _them_. He saw the same shocked look on Sam's face, and, ironically, the echo on Henriksen's.

Henriksen was still barking, waving a hand, marshalling his men. "Those men you're _protecting_ are wanted for murder, bank robbery, kidnapping—is that the kind of trash you're risking yourselves for?" But he was starting to sound a little desperate, especially as the living barrier he faced never wavered. His men stood by uncertainly.

Dean began to grin.

"Dean," Sam said softly, immediately drawing his attention back. "Your shoulder…"

He nodded stiffly; he knew what a dislocation felt like. "Go for it."

Sam leaned his forehead against Dean's, bracing him, as his fingers ghosted over the distended joint. Dean closed his eyes and swallowed, trying to lose himself in the memory of the eyes of the waitress back in Louisville.

The spike of agony still tore a muffled cry and a jerk from him. He drifted for a moment, until the feel of Sam warmly breathing on his face and very gently tucking his bad arm into the half-zipped front his jacket pulled him back. His brother chafed the nape of his neck for a moment, until Dean tightly nodded. He was grateful for the hand that helped him stand, even more so for the one that was balled in the back of his jacket to invisibly help him stay standing. He wasn't about to give Henriksen the satisfaction of seeing his weakness.

The FBI agent seemed a little…busy, however. He'd marched close to the group, gun brandished, only to find himself facing a bunch of unmoving, impassive, stressed-out parents in full protective mode, defending their kids' saviors as they hadn't been able to their kids. When other suited men tried to circle the group, it just closed in tighter.

"What is wrong with you people!" Henriksen's voice cracked in disbelief and something close to bewilderment. "They're the _bad guys_."

It had no effect. A few parents glanced back at them, but their eyes were full of relief and gratitude as they clung to their kids. Sam blinked at Dean, and Dean cracked him a grin. "Never underestimate parental instinct, Sammy," he muttered.

Dean turned back, caught Henriksen's frustrated gaze through the mass of people. Heard a growled, "Winchester," and couldn't resist giving the man a cocky wave. It seemed quite possible for a moment that the agent would have a stroke, but then Dean saw the inevitable slow capitulation, gun dropping. Henriksen's gaze was lethal, an unspoken promise it wasn't over as he pointed silently at the Winchesters, and Dean acknowledged the challenge with a nod. He'd expected no less. Sam exhaled next to him, and Dean remembered with a flinch the gun in his little brother's hand.

Then Sam was leading him away, letting the townspeople keep the hounds at bay. Dean leaned on Sam without it looking like he was leaning, and let him take the lead.

Now he just wanted to get out of there and go _home_.

00000

Home turned out to be a motel way, way off I-40 somewhere in Arkansas, about a hundred miles from Little Rock. Dean appreciated irony.

Sam had bound his arm to his chest, nestled ice against his hip and side and shoulder, then pulled a couple of blankets over him before sitting down on the edge of the bed to clean the blood from Dean's face and hands. He fell asleep before Sam was even done, lulled by the sound of the rain outside and Sam's soft history lesson on the Cherokee and a small handful of painkillers. The kids were safe, even the overgrown one next to him, and that was all Dean needed.

Sam moved them every night to another motel, where they'd spend the day eating take-out and watching whatever channels came in. One day it was a Scooby-Doo marathon; the next, _Ghost Hunters_, which was just too easy to make fun of. The third day, Dean knew it was time to start looking for a new gig when he could cautiously move his arm again, no longer fell asleep in the middle of every conversation, and his brother asked him, finally.

"You really knew what to do, with those kids."

It wasn't exactly a question and wasn't all that clear, but he got it. Had sorta been waiting for it, Dean realized once Sam spoke up. But he still just shrugged. "I had enough practice."

Sam shook his head, shower-damp hair flying. "I don't just mean how to deal with children. Those kids were in shock, and you weren't thrown at all, man. You knew how to handle them."

Dean blinked slowly, watching the happy family in the commercial smile at each other. The mom had long, curly blonde hair. "You remember the wood nymph that took you when you were six?" he finally asked.

Sam straightened a little. "No—wait. I was…up in a tree?"

Dean leaned back against the headboard, appreciating the hot girl on screen now extolling long distance rates, or maybe an airline. "Took dad and me almost a day to find you," he said absently.

"I thought I'd dreamed that," Sam said, voice wondering.

Dean huffed a laugh, slid down a little. "I'm not surprised—you were pretty freaked out."

"Yeah, well, you try being held hostage in a tree," Sam defended heatlessly as he yanked a pair of jeans on and shoved Dean over on the bed. He settled in next to him to watch TV. Some teenage sitcom was on. Dean had been too tired to bother changing it.

"We found you," Dean repeated firmly, maybe more for himself. But Sam didn't argue.

He did, however, squirm a little, something clearly still on his mind.

"What, Sam?"

Sam grimaced faintly. "You don't think Henriksen'll…talk to those parents, right? Back off a little?"

Dean shrugged. "Doubt it. Guy's out to get us." At Sam's sigh, he pulled in a breath. "But, yeah, I guess it's possible."

It was raining again, and it made Dean drowsy. He slipped a little lower on the bed. They needed to get out there, find a hunt, keep going, but maybe another day of downtime wouldn't hurt. Just until the rain passed. Sam could use the rest, too, still too unsettled by their time in jail to be sleeping well. He always had taken a while to wind down. He'd slept in Dean's bed for nearly a month after the wood nymph.

"I wouldn't've let Henriksen get you again, Sammy," Dean murmured. Sam was close enough that Dean could feel his brother's heat at his back, and it was soul-deep reassurance that he was safe.

There was a few beats, enough that he thought maybe he'd gone to sleep, or that Sam was chafing yet again at the thought of Dean _letting _him do anything, when he felt Sam shift and heard his soft reply. "I know."

Long as they were clear. Didn't matter if a town had suddenly decided to care, if the two of them weren't as alone in the world as it sometimes seemed, even if they were in even hotter water than before. Dean let himself drift off, knowing things would be back to normal when he woke but savoring the feeling that, just for a little while, there was no doubt he always could and would be able to save his little brother.

**The End**


End file.
